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How to VoteCatholic 2007
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Applying the Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Public Witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Abortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Bioethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8The Death Penalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Defense and Terrorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Judicial Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Marriage and the Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Economic Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Taxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Health Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Religious Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20In Brief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
 
 
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atholics make up about 30 percent of those who vote in national elections. These 30 millionCatholics have the power to make our country a better nation
—
more welcoming to life, moresupportive of families, and more effective in its programs to help the poor and marginalized.Furthermore, Catholics who attend Mass regularly vote more often and express heightened concern for
issues at the core of the Church’s social teaching. Once politicians notice that Catholics vote their values,
the faithful will have an opportunity to influence their leaders.But there are a few things to remember.F
irst, Catholics who vote should not worry about “imposing” their values on others. The U.S. Supreme
Court decision recognizing the legality of slavery would never have been overturned if men and women
of faith had chosen to keep their religious convictions private. The voters who supported Lincoln didn’tworry about “imposing” their faith in ending the scourge of slavery.
Catholics do not seek laws requiring citizens to attend church or observe Lenten fasts. On the contrary,Catholics advocate the protection of basic human rights through legislation and policy, such as the rightto life and the right to educational freedom. Laws and policies embody the values we
—
as a nation
—
agree to live by.
Second, Catholics know that the protection of the unborn is the “dominant issue” among all politicalissues. Though some have criticized Catholics as being “single
-
issue” voters, the principle underlying
the rejection of abortion extends to other issues, such as bioethics, population, euthanasia, anddefense. The mandate to protect life in politics is unconditional and should be our foremostconsideration.Third, not all the policy positions taken by candidates are of equal importance to Catholics. As dominant-issue voters, Catholics should learn to give various issues their proper priority, thus preserving thehierarchy of values at the core of Church teaching.There is no need for any Catholic who enters the voting booth to leave any part of the Faith outside. Thetradition of Catholic moral and social teaching is a practical voting guide second to none.
Applying the Principles
Political judgments are rarely black-and-white
—
most require prudence (the application of a generalprinciple to a concrete situation).All Catholics bear the responsibility of making prudential judgments, but these judgments rely oninformation that is often not easily available. We need guidance, and the bishops offer it through thepublications of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).The USCCB represents a merging in 2001 of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and theUnited States Catholic Conference (USCC), which were created in 1966. Since then, the bishops havereleased more than 100 pastoral letters and statements that take positions on dozens of public policymatters, ranging from handguns, racial prejudice, and U.S. relations with Panama to treatment of theaging, farm laborers, and war in the Middle East.
C
 
 
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These statements are intended to educate Catholics on pressing issues of law and policy. Someconfusion has also been created unintentionally by this official commentary on such a wide range of issues: Few Catholics make the distinction between binding statements of principle and the non-bindingprudential judgments on policy issues.The bishops themselves recognize the potential for confusion and have addressed it directly, forexample, in their pastoral
Economic Justice for All 
: “We do not claim to make
these prudential
 judgments with the same kind of authority that marks our declarations of principle.” Instead, the letters
are attempts at applying Catholic principles to concrete situations. But the authority of bishops inmatters of faith and morals does not extend to their prudential judgments in other matters.
Don’t misunderstand me: Catholics need the education in social teaching offered by the bishops. We canlearn from the bishops’ examples of how to think prudentially and how to gather the expert
ise and datanecessary to put principle into practice. But the habit of prudence belongs to individuals, not to a group.Prudence is not prudence when it is handed down like a rule to be followed. Individual prudential judgment follows from principles and cannot be commanded or dictated.
The U.S. bishops have clearly stated, “Decisions about candidates and choices about public policies
require clear commitment to moral principles, careful discernment and prudential judgments based onthe values of our fai
th” (
Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility 
).
What’s important to recognize, first of all, is the commitment to principle at the core of policy
recommendation. What must be considered is
how effective a policy will be in implementing the principle that underlies it 
.
Public Witness
Should a political candidate talk publicly about his faith? Should an elected official allow his or her faithto inform political decisions? These are questions that have been discussed for decades, but the debatehas grown more heated in recent years.
The Church’s position is clear: “A well
-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for apolitical program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and mor
als”
(
Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life
, 4).The Church teaches very clearly that the political order is not separate from the divine order revealed byfaith (
Gaudium et Spes
, 74). Yet some well-known Catholic politicians over the past decades have arguedthat Catholic values should remain personal, not political. These same politicians, however, claim aCatholic basis for policies addressing, for example, a preferential option for the poor, yetwholeheartedly reject Catholic teachings on the protection of life.This insistence on compartmentalizing faith restricts our compassion and concern to our immediate
family. A religion with “love thy neighbor” as its central tenet cannot remain restricted to one’s family.
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